Capital Structure, Labor Relations, and Determinants of Voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting
Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: I examine the influence of labor, debtholders, and customers on the determinants of voluntary, stand-alone CSR report initiation.Exploring the influence of these stakeholder groups expands our understanding of how the demand for voluntary non-financial disclosure, embodied by CSR reporting, arises and provides a model to reduce selection bias in future CSR studies.I expect that CSR reports are relevant to employees who possess unemployment aversion and debtholders mindful of default risk.Consequently, when these stakeholders are more influential at a given firm, there should be a greater propensity to disclose CSR activities.Further, I posit that there can be an interactive effect between these two stakeholder groups on the propensity to disclose.Consistent with my predictions, I find firms with high labor pressure, a high degree of leverage, and greater advertising intensity are more likely to initiate disclosure of CSR activities.I also find the odds of CSR reporting are statistically higher as leverage increases in a sample with high labor pressure, as compared to a sample with low labor pressure.My findings suggest labor and debtholders influence voluntary CSR reporting and also that laborrelated capital structure strategy influences voluntary non-financial disclosure activity.
Author: Elizabeth Kohl
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W95626722